Are you willing to tip your Uber driver?

There’s a lot happening at Uber and with Uber for quite some time. While the news flashed today that Travis Kalanick has resigned from the designation of CEO and will continue serving as a board member, there is another significant development in Uber for drivers and users, that a user can now pay a tip to the driver for a ride.

This is the first time that company is now agreeing to roll out this feature within the app, and the feature is already operational in Houston, Minneapolis and Seattle beginning from Tuesday, saidUber. The feature will be expanded over the next few weeks and will be available to all the drivers in the US by the end of July this year. And this not only limits to riders but UberEATS customers as well.

The process is quite handy for users where after ending the trip, the user can pick a preset amount or enter a custom amount that one is willing to pay; there’s a 30-day window within which you will able to tip your driver, suggests a post from TheNextWeb.

Needless to say, this will surely bring a smile on a driver’s face while on the other hand, the driver will surely leave no space to ensure that customer says bye to him with a comfortable ride.

Uber’s drivers are not employees at Uber but independent contractors so to ensure everything works well between them and Uber, they have to pay the car maintenance charges and other related costs on their own.

Although working for flexible hours is nice but that’s not really that great, they aren’t going to receive incentives on merit basis while they even lack paid sick leave, forget to talk about vacations. Here comes the proposition of tip as a saviour for them, arguably though!

It is simple, the more you drive for Uber, the more you earn, there’s no other way round. Tips from the customers add as a bonus that will propel earnings plus push to do better!

Uber also rolled out some other changes on Tuesday, that include the drivers will be paid if passengers cancel the ride after two minutes of booking it and also, paying drivers for all the time they have to wait for passengers on per-minute rate starting 2 minutes after arrival. The company seems firm to improve driver’s working conditions striving for 180 days of change (and beyond).

Well, this feature of tipping drivers is certainly not new – Lyft, its rival, has already been doing that from almost past 5 years in the US and the company thinks it’s a right thing to do. This worked for Lyft quite well, the company recently noted that its drivers have earned a quarter billion ($250 million) in tips since the feature became available on the platform.

But now the question arrives, are you willing to pay a tip to your Uber driver? The answer will vary for most of us depending on many conditions. Like for an example, for an hour long ride, will the customer pay more tip than a customer who had a 15 mins ride? Or will the customer opt to pay any tip as the one is already paying a hefty amount for a long trip?

Another example could be, the ride that you are sharing with two more people whom you don’t know, will the one who first comes out of the cab be willing to pay looking at two other faces? Or will the last one consider to pay any tip if the first two have already paid?

There will be innumerable cases that can be drawn and to be studied that how this feature will serve the most, and that actually depends person-to-person plus the experience they have during the ride. And of course, it first depends on one’s pocket as well.

For now, Uber drivers will surely be happy having a crave to earn more as once the company dismissed the idea of tipping on-demand. Will this step help Uber move forward in the mid of all the negatives that are happening with it?